The Time is Just the Time it Takes for You to Talk
by meteoritecrater
Summary: Alicia doesn't sleep. Her brain is numb with tiredness, but she doesn't sleep.


The Time is Just the Time it Takes for You to Talk

Alicia doesn't sleep. Her brain is numb with tiredness, but she doesn't sleep.

_I like you._

Her jaw clenches around the question she hasn't asked; her limbs feel heavy with the same force that's pressing down on her chest.

_I like you._

She blinks, but there's no difference between the dark behind her eyelids and the shadow of her ceiling. She's felt so out of her depth in so many ways this year that she thinks her skin should have thickened.

_I like you._

Her skin feels raw against her sheets; new.

* * *

><p>It's the eyelashes that she notices; more than the coy smiles, the long glances, the strategically buttoned shirts. People say it's all in the eyes, but it's Kalinda's eyelashes that give her away. She looks up through her eyelashes at the man who tips an elbow into her beer, bats them at the bartender who serves their free replacements. She teases with every breath in, flirts with every breath out. And then she looks over at Alicia.<p>

Kalinda's eyes are clear and direct, hooded, but guileless in a way they aren't with anyone else. She smirks and holds up her new beer to clink the necks of their bottles together, but Alicia puts hers down, tips her head to the side and studies her.

"What?" Kalinda says, and there's a snap to her words that makes Alicia smile with the knowledge that it's never real, never with her.

"You are a _flirt_, Kalinda."

Kalinda's brows rise sharply, and she splutters, half affected, on a pull from her beer. "And I thought you knew me," she says dryly.

Alicia's lips quirk, and she tilts her head in acknowledgement. "You flirt with everybody."

Kalinda swings her bottle, half to exaggerate her point, half because it's her fifth of the night. "And?"

"You flirt with every single person in the world. But not with me. Why?"

Kalinda stills, her forehead scrunching with a tipsy sluggishness, and puts her beer down on a coaster carefully. "I think we need to get some shots."

Alicia shakes her head and grins around a sip of beer, watching Kalinda's stool tip forwards as she orders, shoulders angled so that her shirt lowers for the bartender's pleasure.

Tequila is still burning the back of her throat when Kalinda's fingers brush her elbow. "Because. _I like you._"

Alicia doesn't try for significance until later, when she's staring at the ceiling, seeing Kalinda's soft half smile and hearing the words '_I like you_' with a thousand different meanings.

Red light blinks numbers too early for reason as the stillness of her body starts to suffocate her. It's not the first time she's left Peter alone in bed or the first time she's picked up the phone, but it is the first time she's pressed the call button.

"Is there a problem?" Kalinda's voice is husky and slowed with sleep, and Alicia sinks down into her couch, curling her hand around the phone.

"What did you mean, 'I like you'?"

"What?"

Kalinda's incredulity fires shards of sense into the pit of her stomach, but it's too late to stop. "What did you mean?"

"What. Alicia," Kalinda yawns her name, sheets rustling, and Alicia sees a curve of thigh, fingers brushing sleep away from dark eyes, sleek hair rumpled around sleep stained cheeks.

"You said you liked me. I asked you why you don't flirt with me and you said you liked me. What did you mean?"

"Alicia, it's… I don't even want to look over at the clock time."

"I need to know." She hears the desperate edge to her own voice and sighs, cradling her forehead in her palm. "I just…"

"Why does it matter?"

"Is it a…" Alicia's hair blows away from her face with the force of her exhalation, her resolve firming on her next breath in. "Is it a you're the only person I'm not attracted to thing?"

"What? Alicia, no. You're my friend."

"So you are attracted to me."

There's a low groan in her ear, and Alicia's nerves twist underneath her skin. "Yes, sure Alicia, I'm attracted to you. Is this a booty call? Because I don't respond to those past my bed time."

Alicia's throat is as dry as Kalinda's voice, and her silence chokes the phone line. "It's not a booty call," she says, the words scrambling out of her mouth too late.

Alicia can hear rustling as Kalinda sits up. "What is this really about?"

"I don't know," Alicia turns her face for a second, the cushion cool against her cheek.

The silence tenses between them, then Kalinda's voice starts, low and careful. "Would you like to come over and talk?"

Alicia says yes, but it isn't until Kalinda's new address is in her GPS and she's half way there that she thinks to wonder what she's agreed to.

* * *

><p>Kalinda's door is open, like she knew that Alicia would have thought too much if she'd had to knock. A beer is thrust into her hands before she even steps through the door, and she clutches it greedily. Kalinda's features are softened by a lack of cosmetics, and as she curls her legs up under her on the couch, pink shorts with white hearts rise up her thighs.<p>

Alicia laughs around the mouth of the bottle.

"Don't," Kalinda says, pointing her beer at Alicia's face. "You don't get to wake me up at four in the morning, then laugh at my pyjamas."

"I think they're cute," Alicia says, and the fact that she means it only deepens Kalinda's scowl.

"There's a reason I don't invite people around after I've gone to bed." Her voice is pointed, and Alicia ducks her head, smiling.

"You invited me, though."

"Exception to every rule." Kalinda sets her drink down, straightens up and looks at her, direct and unflinching. "Why are you here?"

Alicia recrosses her legs and picks at the label of her bottle. "I don't know," she says finally. "I wanted to know what you meant. Why you flirt with everyone but me."

"Would you like for me to flirt with you?" Kalinda leans forwards so that she can feel her warmth, smell the faint hint of soap on her skin.

Alicia's eyes narrow, contemplating the slope of Kalinda's face, the weight in her eyes. "No. I just want to know why. You're far from an open book, Kalinda."

Kalinda leans back, takes a long pull from her bottle, and licks the rim in a way that would seem absent minded to anyone who didn't know her. The corner of Alicia's lips smirk upwards, and Kalinda looks down at her shirt, fiddling with the hem of it. When she looks back up and takes another drink, it's not for show. "I don't know. I like you. I don't have… friends. I never had them, until I met you."

It settles something. An itch of something in between worry and hope. "Okay," she says, drinking the rest of her beer and sinking back into the cushions of Kalinda's couch. They talk of work, take bets on how long the new interns will last, and when Alicia wakes up the next morning with a blanket draped over her, Kalinda's hand is warming the top of it.

She wonders about the order of that – the blanket's appearance, and Kalinda falling asleep beside her.

* * *

><p>Later, she'll think of Peter, lying next to her, with his earnest attempts to win back her trust; of Will, and the things they've left unsaid.<p>

And she'll remember the warmth, the faint hint of soap on her skin.


End file.
